The present invention relates to smoking articles such as cigarettes, and in particular, to processed tobacco-containing materials useful as components for such smoking articles.
Popular smoking articles, such as cigarettes, have a substantially cylindrical rod shaped structure and include a charge of smokable material such as shredded tobacco (e.g., in cut filler form) surrounded by a paper wrapper thereby forming a so-called "tobacco rod." Normally, a cigarette has a cylindrical filter element aligned in an end-to-end relationship with the tobacco rod. Typically, a filter element includes cellulose acetate tow circumscribed by plug wrap, and is attached to the tobacco rod using a circumscribing tipping material. It also has become desirable to perforate the tipping material and plug wrap, in order to provide dilution of drawn mainstream smoke with ambient air.
Certain cigarettes include tobacco-containing papers as components thereof. Such tobacco-containing papers are employed as substrates for flavors, as smokable filler, as wrappers for tobacco rods and as components for filter elements. Exemplary tobacco-containing papers and smoking articles incorporating such papers are described in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 661,747, filed Feb. 27, 1991, 759,266, filed Sep. 13, 1991, 642,233, filed Jan. 23, 1991 and 723,350, filed Jun. 28, 1991; in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,991,596 to Lawrence, et al., 5,025,814 to Raker, 5,065,776 to Lawson, et al., 5,027,837 to Clearman, et al. and 4,924,883 to Perfetti, et al.; in Canadian Patent No. 1,271,389; in European Patent Application No. 432,927 and in Chemical and Biological Studies on New Cigarette Prototypes That Heat Instead of Burn Tobacco, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (1988).
It would be desirable to provide a process for manufacturing a tobacco-containing paper useful as a component for smoking articles.